Rating: PG - 13 (one occurrence of the F-word and...well...this is really depressing)
Disclaimer: DA is not mine.
A/N: This goes out to bk who requested some angst from me (Totally for you babe!) I was actually listening to opera in the shower when I came up with the idea (inspiration comes from strange places, no?) This doesn't come from the upcoming episode of DA...I haven't looked at it and don't plan to until it's on TV, so no spoilers to worry about.
Rubicon
The night was cold and an achingly clear black. Zack got the feeling that if he stared up at the endless sky long enough he would drown. Like a river running strait out of the mouth of hell, the night arched around his tired body, holding him tight in its embrace. His heartbeat quickened as claustrophobia set in. Heaving, his lungs grasped for air and found none.
He was laying on the door of death, blood running into his eyes. The thick, hot liquid stung and blanketed the velvet sky in crimson. Hard and pebbly, the pavement under him was slick with the blood flowing freely now from his body.
Alone...he felt so alone.
Tears mixed with the honey-like substance invading his sight, spilling down onto his hands. Remotely, he was aware of where he was, of the sign above him. Foggle Towers -- why did that name seem so familiar? His mind struggled to comprehend anything other than the bleak cloud descending upon him.
Resting his hot forehead against the slick ground, he sighed. The long rush of air was interrupted intermittently by low gurgling sounds. Hearing the sound alone would have made him vomit had he not done so moments later anyway. His stomach heaving violently, he lurched against the ground.
"Oh God..." he muttered to himself, positive that most of his insides were laying on the ground beside him.
Again, an angry loneliness filled him. Zack wasn't afraid of death, he'd faced it many times in his life only to laugh in its face. What frightened him most about his situation, laying on his belly in front of this expensive looking building, was that he would go alone, and for nothing.
Under his hip, a hard lump presented itself. Zack rarely carried a weapon, he didn't need one, but for this night he was armed, as much good as it did him laying underneath him pinned to the ground.
Manticore had been a hundred times worse than he'd remembered it. The pain, the experiments, it was all more crushing and designed to systematically destroy. He'd almost let them destroy him, almost let them win. His tortured mind lingered on the very hinges of sanity, and he wasn't completely sure whether he'd already slipped past the faded line, his foot definitely in the water if not having swum the river.
None of that mattered, he didn't care about Manticore anymore. He'd escaped, fled their barbed hands for a very singular reason. He refused to die alone.
So, the world had dropped him off in front of this place -- this Foggle Towers. Why the hell had he come so far, only to drop to his knees in front of this place? Reaching under himself, he attempted to push himself up off the sidewalk, his insides shifting dangerously. For a moment, he thought he'd vomit more of them up.
Thankfully, they stayed rooted inside his broken body as he rose onto unsteady feet and once again cast his gaze toward the crystalline sky. From time to time in his manufactured life, he'd wondered about God. Zack certainly didn't qualify as a lost sheep, he was a weapon created and turned against his makers. He was only another form of evil in the world, a living, breathing, cataloged demon. He had no doubt where he was going when death finally caught up to him, if indeed he was entitled to go anywhere at all. Manticore had never offered any courses in theology.
Perfectly in sync with the rest of Zack's life, he stood wobbling in front of Foggle Towers with a mission in mind. For one of the first times in the night, he actually remembered the mission, the one he'd come up with while tied and tortured by the hands of his makers. The only parents he'd ever really had, and they'd done nothing but fuck with him. He was a guinea pig to them, a run away, out of control animal.
Images came to his mind he'd seen before. He couldn't recall where he'd seen them, but that hardly mattered. Caged animals with wires running out of their bodies. Strange metal implants hanging out of their heads and looks of indescribable pain in their round, brown eyes. It really was remarkable what could be done to a living creature before it died. Skin could be removed, cavities opened, and a wide variety of implements implanted before a creature, even as insignificant as a mouse, would give themselves over into oblivion.
Zack was all together less willing to live than a lab rat. One thing kept him moving through the night, and that one thing was hundreds of feet above him. Familiar with all the unconventional ways to get into the room of his choice, Zack put his mind and strained body to work, ignoring the pain. The pain no longer mattered, nothing mattered, except the need to end his aching loneliness.
He was so frightened to be alone.
Working deftly, despite his injuries, Zack had crucial moments to think. Himself a soldier on his last mission, he stood looking at a bridge he wasn't sure he could cross. Hot pain searing through his entire body, he found himself suddenly coming to a level of understanding with someone not so unlike himself.
Julius Caesar, standing on the banks of the Rubicon, wondering if he could cross knowing all the while he could never go back. Crossing meant traveling to the point of no return, sparking a war that would reverberate through history.
Zack was somewhat less familiar with the history books than Caesar, but only too familiar with his wild, furious Rubicon. Straining, he paused for a moment to vomit again, the liquid filled dark and smelling of death.
The Rubicon called to him, beckoning him toward it with open arms.
Alone, much too alone. He couldn't be alone.
Coming to the window he'd been aiming for, Zack peered inside the warm, happy looking place. His eyes pained him, and his vision was blurry. Even his stung sight couldn't miss the man sitting in the room, his back to the window. The darkness was closing in around him, quickly...much too quickly. His muscles relaxed momentarily, almost levering him off the building with his own weight.
Reaching toward his hip, he pulled out the gun and looked at it. It was covered in a silky substance, creating a glistening sheen in the light from the window. For long moments, he didn't realize what covered the weapon, and didn't care. Feeling the blood ooze between his fingers as he gripped it, he slowly aimed.
Can't go alone...I won't go alone.
His mind reeling with insanity, his heart pounding faintly against his shattered ribs. He stared at the back of the man's head, at his wide shoulders and spiky hair. Perhaps sensing Zack's eyes on him, the man turned around, his cerulean blue eyes meeting Zack's blood-stained ones.
Hardly taking note of the wild fear in the other man's eyes, Zack abandoned himself to the dark night's embrace and crossed the Rubicon.
***Don't even bother asking me what happened to Zack, why he was hurt so bad or what generally was up with that. I don't know...kind of came out of nowhere***